


i think i know enough of hate

by ilgaksu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Wicked, M/M, Wicked AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: Some nights, Keith waits until he’s the last one in that section of the base, and he brings up the broadcast again, replays it over and over. He pauses it on Lance’s face and tries to look for the signs of how they grew older. He reaches out and his fingertips smudge the glass screen and he thinksthey always did love you. You always knew how to make them love you.





	i think i know enough of hate

 

Cover art by the magnificent [IFellFromTheSkies](https://ifellfromtheskies.tumblr.com/). This project had been dormant for a while before his art and enthusiasm rekindled my love for it, so please go give him some love at the link! Title is from Robert Frost's _Fire and Ice,_  because I'm a walking cliché.

 

*

 

Sometimes, Keith sees the propaganda broadcasts. It’s usually mid-way through Pidge splicing into the network to overlay their own messages - of reminder, of resistance, of the existence of something other, outside the City walls. If anyone else in their cell asks, he only ever catches glimpses: the City skyline at sunrise, blinding in its glitter. The roar of lions. Lance, the Last Good Witch, stood to attention with his perfect spine, rising grey like bruises under his eyes.

Some nights, Keith waits until he’s the last one in that section of the base, and he brings up the broadcast again, replays it over and over. He pauses it on Lance’s face and tries to look for the signs of how they grew older. He reaches out and his fingertips smudge the glass screen and he thinks _they always did love you. You always knew how to make them love you._ In his mind, Lance is seventeen, blue-eyed and young and fiercely devoted. Some nights, he dreams they’re back there, alone in the Palace - their world collapsing around them, the way betrayal swims in blue - and sometimes Lance takes his outstretched hand. Sometimes, they both fall from the sky. Sometimes, Lance dies on the ground helping him get away.

The first lesson Keith tells the new recruits is _it’s not enough to imagine you live in a different world. It’s not enough to close your eyes. We make the best of the world we live in._ The first warning he hears about himself is usually from the other cell members. _Yes, it’s true. He went to school with the Last Good Witch. Don’t ask him about it. Yes, it’s true. He looks just like the posters. Don’t try it. Yes, it’s true. He’s Takashi Shirogane’s younger brother. When he went missing during the November Riots, it broke Keith’s chest open. Just because we got Shirogane back doesn’t mean that kind of thing can be fixed._ He feels their eyes, huge with pity they mistake for understanding him - an error in translation - follow him down, and down, and down.

The thing is, Keith is fine. That’s the part that they don’t understand. Keith is really, genuinely fine. It’s just he has work to do, and there’s never enough time.

 

*

 

When Keith is seventeen, he meets the boy he’s going to hate for the rest of his life.

“Are you from outside the City then?” Lance asks, looking up from flipping through a magazine, hanging halfway off his bed. He’s all limbs, sprawled out like a spoilt cat. Keith, looking up from storing his grimoire carefully on his desk, nods.

“Borderlands,” he says, and Lance raises his eyebrows. His gaze rakes over Keith’s dark grey clothes, the scarf wound around the lower half of his face to protect his mouth from the dust storms common that far out. He says, “Wow, yeah, that explains it.”

“It?” Keith echoes, frowning. Lance makes an airy gesture, already engrossed back in the gloss of his magazine. His uniform is perfectly crisp, the drape of his arm a deliberate bored arc. He’s a boy who’s designed himself to be seen. Keith - who ran out of his village, knife in hand, knees skinned by slipping on rocks - immediately resents him.

“You,” Lance replies absently. “I should have said you. That explains _you._ ”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Keith retorts defensively and Lance clicks his tongue, licks his thumb, and turns another page of the magazine.

“You’re right. Let’s keep it that way. Are you staying in all night? I’d rather you didn’t.”

Keith narrows his eyes long and hard at Lance’s magazine before stalking out. Keith is already nearly down the corridor before he hears Lance’s shriek. He wonders how it could have taken a witch that long to notice his own magazine was on fire, laughs to himself all the way out of the building. People look at him strangely. It’s nothing new.

 

*

 

“You know this means war,” Lance mutters ominously - in the middle of the night, from his side of the room, his voice muffled by blankets.

“Bring it on, City boy,” Keith finds himself saying in reply.

 

*

 

“This is your side of the room,” Lance says, less than two days later, “And this is mine.”

He points to the chalk line, measured clean and distinct, bisecting their room exactly, precisely in half. There’s not a speck of chalk dust on his cuffs. He probably changed, then, or perhaps he’s just that careful. There’s already a greyish smudge, a blurring of the line where Keith had stepped onto it, dragging his boot heel on his way to his bed, pressed so close to the far wall Keith is surprised it hasn’t phased through. The school is surrounded by a fringe of woods, dripping green in the early morning dew, air so cold it cuts into your lungs, a breath-stealer in more ways than one. Keith would rather sleep out there, under the stars, than in the warm with this brat.  

“This is ridiculous,” he decides, glaring at Lance.

“ _This_ is a _solution_ ,” Lance amends. “We’re not the same kind of person,” he adds, in way of explanation, like Keith hasn’t already noticed.

After all, there’s this: Keith, bastard son of a missing mother, found wandering the marketplace on unsteady legs by a baker’s son called Shiro. Shiro took Keith home to his parents,  who tucked Keith in by an oven twice his size until he stopped shivering, fed him leftovers until his stomach stopped gurgling, and kept him there, safe and warm, all the night until he stopped crying. And even after, they kept him, though he singed the carpets with the song of unfurling magic, searing in his fingertips. Shiro’s mother called him a little firecracker, and laughed, as though a child who could burn them all down with the wrong breath was only and simply a child.

After all, there’s this: years later, after her funeral, Shiro looked out of their window one dusk and saw the encroaching tallow-light from the neighbours, bright in the purple like the shock of blood in a bruise. Shiro, who was always eerie-calm in a crisis, shoved a bulging satchel into Keith’s arms, snatched Keith’s acceptance letter, and told him to run, and run fast, and never look back. Keith fled through the dark, wild-eyed on the next train into the City, and school, and away from the glowing orange of the horizon.

After all, there’s this: a Borderlands boy has no place in a City academy. Not one like Keith, who hoards food under his bed and a knife under his pillow, whose magic was left licking along untrained for so long, too long, nobody to teach him and nobody to try. The City was built for the City, and the school for students like Lance: born in the shadow of the Amethyst Palace, magic caught early in Haggar’s testing scheme for the spark, all velvet jackets and manicured accent and bad flirting but everyone goes along with him -

The word Keith’s reaching for, he thinks, is _arrogant._

 

*

 

And then, even so, later there’s this as well:

“Lance,” Keith says desperately at seventeen-nearly-eighteen, holding out his hand, hanging off his broom, knee locked tight and aching whilst his body lists over too far to the right, “Lance, come with me. We can take him down together. We can do this together.”

“Keith,” Lance says, voice torn, and takes his hand. Lance always runs cold. The press of his skin makes Keith shiver. And for a moment Keith thinks he’s won, lets the wild hysteria of it take him, but Lance’s hand tightens its grip against his fingers, brief and almost painful. Lance shakes his head and lets go of Keith’s hand.

“My family live in the City,” Lance says quietly. It sounds like a door closing between them, like the scrape of chalk against the floor. _This is your side of the room, and this is mine._

_We’re not the same kind of person._

“We can come back for them,” Keith tries, desperately, and Lance half-smiles at him.

“That’s what he’d want. He’d hold them here in the hope I’ll come back one day. If I leave with you, I’ll never make back to them.”

The truth of it falls in Keith’s chest like a stone. They can both hear the city sirens now, wailing out into the night, ratcheting ever louder. They can hear the hammer of running feet, growing ever closer. He watches, paralysed, as Lance struggles out of his own jacket.

Lance holds it out, between them like a white flag. He says, “Set it on fire.”

“What?”

“Keith, we don’t have time.” Lance sounds angry now. “They’ll start lighting up the skyline. Set my jacket on fire and go find your brother. Do it.”  

“Why are you doing this?” Keith can hear the horror in his own voice, thin, suspended in the air with him. He’s barely inches from Lance but he already feels very far away.  

“Because I’m sorry I made fun of your stupid clothes,” Lance snaps, “The _jacket,_ Keith!”

Keith takes hold of the jacket with one hand, mutters under his breath, and watches the smoke rise between his fingers. He pauses for a moment, the cloth his point of connection to Lance. Then he lets them go. Lance drops it to the side without even looking at it, even as it goes up in a flare of orange. Then he rushes forward, grabs Keith’s face between the cold of his hands and kisses him for the first time, hard and fast, his mouth a hot counterpoint to his fingertips.

Then turns his back on Keith. Keith can’t see Lance's face when Lance snarls, “Fucking _go_ already,” and Keith is running out of words, so Keith goes.

He hears the sound of cracking ice as he rises into the air, the yells of the City Guard, crashing sounds. He can picture them, frozen at the joints, collapsing like dominoes, keeps his eyes dead ahead. On the broadcast that night, they announce that a dangerous fugitive, harboured in the heart of the best school in the country, had manifested and escaped, injuring thirty guards and another student in the process. Keith hadn’t touched a single guard.

 _When the fugitive’s fellow student attempted to apprehend him,_ the broadcast tells the world, _he set his fellow student’s clothing on fire. Luckily, he was able to repel the attack and was unharmed._

He doesn’t see Lance again for another year. By then, he’s turned ice-eyed and untouchable, the Last Good Witch of the City. His face is wallpapered all over the City Square, the line of his bones wavering on the broadcast, and Keith remembers:

Gates don’t just keep good men out of something. They’re designed to hold something in.  

 

*

 

It’s the last night before their future. Tomorrow, they take a train to the Amethyst City, and answer a summons from the Emperor: the first such request of its kind made in years. Keyed up with the weight of carving out history, Keith can’t sleep, and it’s only partly because of that. Right now, he couldn’t tell you the Emperor’s name if he tried.

Lance is half-knelt on Keith’s bed, one hand braced on Keith’s shoulder, the cold of his skin faint but real through the fabric. The chalk line is forgotten on the floor, the faint glow of it visible out of the corner of Keith’s eyes. He does his best to ignore it. It’s not difficult, when Lance is so much in his space. He’s tilted his head to the side, bird-like, scrutinising. Keith looks down and away from the hyperblue of his eyes, but then he’s faced with the reality of Lance shirtless in front of him, all skin, the ridiculous cerise satin of his pyjama pants pulled taut at the angle of his hip. Lance slides his other hand into Keith’s hair. When Keith swallows, he can feel his throat click from sudden dryness.

“You know,” Lance muses, brushing some of Keith’s hair behind his ear absently, frowning slightly, “You’re not half bad looking.”

Keith clenches his fists so tightly he feels his nails bite into his palms. He shivers anyway. Lance immediately pulls his hand away from Keith’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” he says, and Keith realises Lance thinks it’s his hands. It is his hands. It’s not a lie when Keith doesn’t correct him. It isn’t a lie when Keith says, “It’s fine.”

“Anyway,” Lance says, hurriedly, moving back and falling back on the bed beside Keith, staring up at the ceiling. “If you ever learn how to talk to girls you -” He shrugs. The movement of his shoulders shifts the blanket, shifts Keith. “You should learn how to talk to girls.”

“Not everyone likes girls, Lance.” Keith means to spit it out, fall back into the familiar sway of their mutual spite, but it just sounds tired. He should go to sleep. He stays still, waiting for the moment Lance gets it - which is, all in all, faster than Keith expected.

“Huh.” When Keith braves looking over, Lance is biting his lip, frowning again. “How did I miss that?”

“You miss a lot outside of girls and parties and dancing.”

“Hey! I don’t miss everything.”

“I didn’t say everything. I said a lot.”

He feels Lance’s gaze before he meets it. In fact, he resolutely does not meet it until Lance prods him in the ribs, the cold and shock combined jolting down Keith’s spine, and then Keith is forced to look at him. Lance is leaning up on one arm, smirking, only when their eyes meet Keith notices the smirking stops.

“I could teach you how to talk to boys instead,” Lance says, his voice low. Keith feels something in his chest catch. “How about it?”

“I thought we were fighting,” Keith murmurs. Lance rolls his eyes.

“Call a truce.”

“It was your idea. You call it,” Keith insists.

He isn’t sure if this is just some way to Lance to win one over on him, but he remembers Lance in the corridor the other day, some glittering-eyed boy going, “Wow, it fucking sucks you ended up rooming with that freak.” The weird, blank look on Lance’s face before he said, “He keeps to his side of the room, which is more than I bet you do.” The weird, startled look afterwards, whilst the boy’s face had flushed and the group surrounding Lance had giggled, like he’d surprised himself.

“Fine,” Lance says now, “Truce. I figured it didn’t need saying but -”

“I wanted you to say it anyway,” Keith tells him. He feels unhinged, an opening door on a way out of this place: this school, this life, power a conduit to escape the memory of the Borderlands, of misery, of people endlessly gossiping behind his back. Power to cancel out power: the Empire’s favour to raze every last thing said about him to the ground. Tomorrow, he’s going to the City, they’re going to audition for the Emperor - and if he has any say in it, he’s never coming back to this bed, this building. The only concrete reminder will be Lance at his side. It shouldn’t feel like the ground is being pulled out from under his feet, not when it’s all he’s ever wanted, but a lot of things he feels shouldn’t be the way they are. It’s why he finds himself reaching out.  

It’s stupid to try and ground yourself against someone else’s body, but Keith sets his fingertips, light enough to be denied, to the line of Lance’s bare clavicle anyway. He puts his hands to Lance’s bones and Lance makes a soft, half-smothered noise and Keith says, “Go on, then. How do I talk to boys?”  

The ground is gone from beneath his feet, so suddenly Keith wonders if it’s ever been there. He drags his fingertips back and forth, watching the way Lance’s eyes half-close for a moment.

“Uh,” Lance says, and Keith thinks savagely of Lance in class, laughing and composed. This unravelling is a last revenge. “So, the thing is. It’s easier than it looks.”

“Uh huh,” Keith says, slides his hand down the line of Lance’s breastbone, watching as Lance’s breathing turns shallow, presses his palm down against the thunder of his heart. “A lot of stuff is.”

Lance laughs, the sound strained.

“This is so fucking unfair,” he says. Keith raises his eyebrows and drags his fingers down the first three of Lance’s ribs.

“So tell me to stop,” Keith replies. His voice is casual but they’ve spent too long fighting over sides - of a room, of a debate, of everything - for Lance to mistake Keith ever giving in as normal. His voice is casual but he can taste his heart in his mouth, can feel Lance’s magic beating under his skin because of how his is falling - irreparably, he thinks - in sync. He feels every single thread in this blanket through his fucking clothes, and every single thread in each thing he’s wearing. “If you say stop, I’ll stop.”

It’s the closest to giving in Keith’ll ever give him. Lance looks at him, long and hard, and doesn’t say a word. They’ve spent too long being lectured in class about ways to sign a contract, about the dangers, about kisses as signature. Kiss the wrong person, and you can be beholden. Kiss the wrong person, and you can force your whole life right off its axis. Keith leans in, and Lance lets him, even though Lance had been sat on the other side of that classroom, listening like Keith listened, and he still lets Keith hold himself over Lance on his bed, and -

Someone tries the door. It’s locked, but the grinding noise of metal against metal breaks it. Keith throws himself off Lance and over the chalk line down the floor, sitting heavily down on his own bed - not before feeling the taut line of Lance’s body slacken, as though in - what? Frustration? Disappointment?

“Boys,” the hall monitor calls, trying the door again, “Your light is on. Curfew was called half an hour ago.”

Lance looks around wildly for a shirt; Keith throws him a jacket on the floor and then drags his own bedding over his own fully-clothed body, turning his face to the wall. Keith hears Lance head to the door and unlock it. His chest pounding, his own breath reflected to him hot against the blankets, he tries to appear as asleep as possible.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Keith hears Lance say, “It’s on me, this time. Nerves for tomorrow. I was going over some more exercises.”

His voice sounds fine. Keith can’t help but feel annoyed by it.

“Yes,” she says, slowly, “I can imagine. You’re the first two in over a decade to be summoned like this, you know - sorry, not that you needed me to say that again! I’m sure you’ll do us all proud.” There’s a silence, where Keith wonders if they’ve been caught out, before she finally says, “Well. Good luck for tomorrow,” and shuts the door. There’s a beat after the door clicking shut where they both listen for her footsteps receding down the hallway. Keith sits up, pulling away his blankets, to find Lance stood by the door, resting his forehead against it, and has to resist the sudden hysterical urge to laugh.

“You know,” Keith says, “You’re wearing my jacket.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Lance mumbles without moving.

“You’re wearing the finest the Borderlands has to offer. And you’ve always said -”

“Keith, if you don’t stop talking right this -”

“ _I’d rather die in a blizzard than have those clothes on my back,”_ Keith mimics.  

“If I die wearing your clothes, it’ll be because I’ve taken you down with me,” Lance threatens.

 

*

 

“Oh my god,” Lance says imperiously from nearby, “Stop. Stop. Just stop.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Keith says numbly, eyes on his own reflection without registering, hands in his own tangled hair. This is the fourth time he’s tried to braid it back, but his hands are shaking too much and he’s - if he can’t even get this right in his own room, what’ll happen when he’s in front of the Emperor -

Behind him, Lance puts his hands on his hips and raises one impeccable eyebrow.

“You look like a mouse,” Lance says, and Keith watches his reflection as he immediately scowls at him.

“No, I don’t,” he retorts automatically.

“Yup, you do. A tiny little mouse,” Lance enunciates every word, clear as the morning, “So tiny. So sad. So scared of everything.”

Of course, Lance is already dressed, already perfect, already buttoned into a pale suit like armour.

“I’ll set your hair on fire again,” Keith threatens, because he knows the roll in his stomach is something larger than anger. Lance rolls his eyes, as though it hadn’t taken days of shrieking to undo the damage.

“Can you stop it, little mouse?” Lance says, half-mocking, half-sincere. It’s difficult to tell which half is the truth, until he blinks, eyes sliding away from Keith and he mutters, “It’s putting me off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Keith says, “I didn’t realise this was about you.”

“I mean,” Lance says, sounding very reasonable. “It kind of is. If you’re scared, what chance do I have?”

“People like you, Lance,” Keith says, a little stunned. “People always like you.”

“I know what to say to make people like me,” Lance replies quietly. “It’s not the same thing. And you’re not scared of anything. You’re not scared of people not liking you.”

“When did I say that?” Keith snaps. He pulls his hands out of his own hair, wincing as he catches his fingertips on snarls. “When did I ever say that?”

He turns around to glare at Lance properly. Lance looks startled, and then shrugs a little helplessly.

“I don’t know!” he says. “It was kind of implied? You just - I mean, nobody would dress like -”

“Think about how you’re going to finish that.”

“It’s just how you walk,” Lance blurts out, flustered. “You don’t look back. Even if people are whispering, or laughing, or some shit. You just - you don’t look back.” There’s a pause. “I don’t know, now you’ve said it, you - you probably did care.”

“Probably,” Keith admits. Lance bites his lip and nods.

There’s a silence, where Lance fidgets, his eyes on everything but Keith, a flush rising on his face, and Keith remembers the faint sleek of Lance’s skin warm under his fingertips.

“I could fix your hair for you,” Lance says, still not looking at him. “If you want. I mean, if you don’t it’s no big -”

“Okay,” Keith replies.

Lance’s eyes meet his, fast as payback from a bad spell. It leaves Keith reeling backwards worse somehow, dizzy and sure he’s hit the floor without ever having moved. Lance bites his lip again, but this time he smiles at the same time.

“Okay,” he echoes.

Lance sits behind him cautiously, silently. He touches the back of Keith's head lightly, just above the nape of his neck, and says, "Can you pass me a brush?"  
  
Keith does it wordlessly, stares at his own reflection until Lance looks away and it's safe to watch him instead.

For several minutes, Lance brushes Keith’s hair out and Keith lets him, barely making a sound even as the teeth of the brush drag the knots out like a breaking tide. Keith lets out a small protesting sound when Lance unforgivingly yanks out a particularly snarled section.

“Shhh,” Lance murmurs without looking up, voice pitched low and soothing and unlike anything Keith has ever heard out of Lance’s mouth before. “You’re fine.” Lance starts again from the top of Keith’s head. This time, it’s easy. Under Lance’s hands, it’s easy. Keith tries not to think about that.

“Is this a Borderlands thing?” Lance asks, the sound of him suddenly loud after the hush, like gossiping during assembly.

“Long hair?” Lance nods. “Why would it be a Borderlands thing?”

“I don’t know. It’s not a City thing.”

“Why is it always the City with you?” Keith says, only partially annoyed. He feels dangerously out of his head, his syllables sweet and dreamy in his mouth despite their intent. “There are other places, you know. It’s like you’ve never been anywhere else.”

Lance’s hands still for a moment, telling. He puts the brush down, leaning over Keith, their bodies touching chest-to-back, a seamless line of heat before he pulls away.

“Lance?” Keith asks, disbelieving. “Have you ever been anywhere else?”

“Does school count?” Lance asks, mouth wry. He meets Keith’s eyes in the mirror, and it’s like the other day, when Lance was under his hands. Keith used to wonder what it was about him that made him get under Lance’s skin so much. Now he’s wondering if it’s that he makes Lance honest. If he makes Lance afraid.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to,” Lance says, defensive. “I just - I’ll have time later, you know? My mom worries. It’s like she thinks I’ll fall out of the door and into a lion’s mouth.” Lance’s mouth turns grim. “The first time I went home after the Riots, she didn’t even cry. She just stood at the door when I had to go and just - she didn’t seem to want to let me back here, even. She didn’t even say goodbye properly. She just said, “Have you always been this tall?” And then when she let go, she watched me walk down the street all the way. When I turned the corner, she was still there. So I’ll have time later.” He keeps his eyes trained on the nape of Keith’s neck, as though he can see it through the wave of Keith’s hair, the vulnerability of it. It’s a killspot. Even a witch can’t shield it. “Once I’m qualified, I think she’ll be fine with it. She’ll know I’m safe then, right?”

There’s an uncomfortable silence.

“It isn’t a Borderlands thing,” Keith tells him. “When I was little, I was found.”  

“Found? You mean like -”

“Yeah. And they didn’t know where I was from. I don’t remember. But when they tried to cut my hair, I cried.”

“Huh,” Lance says after a beat. It’s only when his hands start moving, careful at the crown of his head, that Keith realises Lance has been sat with his hands buried in Keith’s hair, motionless, for some time. “I always think it’s so weird how you’re real.”

“Thanks?” Keith says, and Lance huffs a little under his breath. He’s doing something complicated, Keith can tell without being able to see it, his hands a blur at the corner of Keith’s eyes, Keith’s gaze hooked on Lance’s face when he’s concentrating. Keith prays whatever it is, it’s the least ridiculous City fashion Lance could come up with, because right now, he really wants to be nice to him.

 _Last night I nearly kissed him,_ Keith remembers. _Last night, I think he wanted me to._ He isn’t sure if it counts as remembering; it’s been a constant thought, a rising white noise through his dreams, until he woke up like falling.

“It’s like you fell out of the sky sometimes.” Lance’s voice is so quiet it feels like a confession, like the way witch-burners used to speak in their great halls, hushed in the wake of their own conviction. “Boys like you shouldn’t be real.”

For a moment, they stare at each other in the mirror’s reflection, Keith in burgundy like burning and Lance looking fragile, like something out of an ivory tower. Keith reaches out and presses his fingertips against the cold glass, firm against the reflection of Lance’s mouth.

“I’m real,” Keith says softly.  Lance huffs again and drops his forehead to Keith’s shoulder for a second, before sitting back up.

“Yeah,” Lance replies, “I know. Your hair’s done.” He holds his hand out over Keith’s shoulder and Keith pulls his hand away from the mirror to pass him a ribbon, black and glossy and wavering between them. Keith’s fingerprints are bright smudges on the silver of the glass. “You can thank me later.” Lance raises his eyebrows. “Go on, take a look.”

Keith barely gives it a cursory glance before turning on his chair and leaning forward, savouring the brief startle in Lance’s eyes before pressing a kiss to his cheek, high on the bone to feel the heat of Lance’s blush.

“I said later was fine,” Lance stammers. Keith nods.

“That’s fine,” Keith says, glowing. The morning is brighter than it’s ever been. This afternoon, they’re both going to become something better than they are, something so loud the world can’t ignore them, their afterimages searing into people’s eyes. Keith can almost taste it. “I’ll thank you properly later.”

Lance swallows, hard.

“Come on, City boy,” Keith says, grinning. “Let’s go impress some important people.”

 

*

 

“Your face is everywhere,” Lance says softly to Keith. He’s stood in his own private chambers, in a Palace they both once stood in the wake of. The shadow of the walls envelopes them again all the same. “I hate it. It’s like being back at school.”

He smiles crookedly. This morning, Keith watched Lance walk onto a stage during an Empire broadcast. He’d been flanked by City Guards, carefully choreographed, falling in around his back like a carapace. Their uniforms are a kind of familiarly dark indigo, a colour that absorbs light and refracts it back out, glittering and false. It was like Lance was stepping up to his own pyre, back when there were burnings, back when the burnings were public. He did it in the sort of way Keith likes to think he’d step up; face held high, the tremble in his legs invisible, go out telling the world to go to hell. The City had watched, applauding, as Lance had unbuttoned his gloves - gloves he never wore in school, gloves that stoke rumours that the Last Good Witch can stop your heart - and smiled his best smile, brittle-eyed. They’d watched in silence from the base as Lance spent the next ten minutes of the broadcast fashioning weapons out of ice, faster and faster, gathering momentum, until he was surrounded by his own cold armoury. They hadn’t given him a microphone - the Last Good Witch of the City is a mouthpiece, not a spokesperson - but Keith could see his lips moving, his eyes flashing towards the grimoire and back every few breaths.

"Are the holograms that accurate?" 

Keith used to see them around the school’s gates, at the train stations, at Borderlands checkpoints: perfect replicas of the Empire’s Most Wanted, their faces and their crimes inseparable, inescapable across the whole country.

“Yes,” Lance says, “And no. They used your matriculation photograph.” He offers Keith another smile. “It’s not your best. Is it true you’ve tamed a lion?”

“You don’t tame lions,” Keith says. Lance nods and looks out of the window, towards the sleeping City.

“Must be nice being famous,” he says wistfully.

“Says you.”

Lance shrugs. The powder blue of his uniform almost glows in the half-light. It’s the sort of thing you can’t get dirty. It’s the sort of thing where Lance would bleed through it.

“You’re shoot on sight,” Lance tells him. “ _Traitor to the Empire_. They warned me you might try and make contact.”

“Did they,” Keith murmurs, unsurprised, watching as Lance smoothes his hand across the wallpaper, whispering, and it peels away under his fingertips. He slips a sheet of paper out from between the paper and the wall proper, no bigger than the palm of his hand. He brings it over, and unfolds it, over and over, until it’s a blueprint covering over half of the table.

He looks up at Keith then.

“They seem to think we were friends.”

Keith knows you can only fold a piece of paper seven times. He’s sure he counted three times that, but Lance’s magic has always been closer to patience than his, for all Lance’s loud mouth.

“I told them we slept in the same room for two years. If they can’t catch you sleeping, maybe you’ve lost the habit.” Lance snorts, and makes sure Keith is watching before he replicates folding the blueprint again, rapidly, until the paper seals back to its former size. “They asked me if there was a spell for that.”

He pushes the now-folded blueprint across the table and looks over his shoulder pointedly. Keith takes the paper quickly, slips it into an inner pocket.

“Were we friends?” Keith asks quietly, when Lance turns back to face him. Lance raises his eyebrows.

“We’ve never been friends,” Lance tells him. The honesty in his voice sears Keith.

“Right,” Keith says.  

“I don’t look at my friends like that,” he adds, and then, quick as a flash, leans over, his mouth a bright, hesitant smudge against the corner of Keith’s. “You have ten minutes until someone comes to check on me. You should -”

The tips of his ears are red, Keith notices, watching Lance look down and fuss with a stray thread at his cuff. He isn’t wearing his gloves.

“Yeah, okay,” Keith stammers. “Uh, sleep? Sleep well?”

“Everyone sleeps safe and warm in the City,” Lance deadpans, still looking at his own bare hands. “Especially its witch.”

Keith makes it halfway to the door, each step lead, before doubling back, crashing into Lance so fast he feels Lance stumble backwards with the force of it. His left hand is splayed out against the wallpaper, and Keith kisses him harsh enough that he feels Lance gasp into his mouth, harsh enough that Keith can’t help but think of Haggar, disappearing malcontents into cars by night. _Try and compel me out of him, bitch._ He pulls back. Lance brings his hand to his mouth, eyes wide.

“You bit me.”

“Do you really hate it?” Keith pushes. Keith doesn’t know how to stop pushing. “Seeing me everywhere. Seeing me.”

Keith sees Lance’s eyes shift to the clock just behind them. He turns Lance’s face back to face him.

Lance says, “No.”      

 

*

 

“How is he?” Shiro asks Keith, voice low, eyes darting about for fear of the rest of the cell overhearing.

Keith hands him the blueprint, walks past without a word, and sleeps until he’s woken for another strategy meeting. He’s still tired. There’s never enough time.  

 

*

 

Here’s how you make a myth: you cloak it in flesh, and then you feed it to the lions. You don’t become Daniel until you make it to the dawn. Keith isn’t sure how long he’s been fleeing the City sirens by the time he crash-lands in the deserts past the Borderlands, half-falling off his broom, and he goes down hard. He hears cloth shred. He feels something in his shoulder tear, the sudden warmth and leak of blood against previously numbed skin. Here’s how you stay alive: you stay on your feet. Keith stumbles up, his broom snapped in half, his palms stinging with grazes; looks up at the stars, his face feeling tight with the memory of dried tears, and tries for the North star.

He loses the North star six times that night, and even then, he grits his teeth. _Stay on your feet._ He loses it another three times before he begins to realise he’s wandering in circles, half-delirious with night-cold, with blood loss, with heartache. He tries again. He tells himself they’re all under the same canopy, that on the other side of sky there’s Lance - someone to keep moving for - and there’s also Haggar, and the Emperor - who are people to keep moving away from. Thirty guards, he heard on the broadcast. He’d been crouched out of sight of the flares on a roof somewhere just beyond the City walls, an unsuspecting family listening inside, their window open on the rapidly cooling night. They hadn’t said what happened to Lance, or whether the Emperor had bought it, or whether any of it was true. Still, even though Keith hadn’t looked back - scared doing so would stop him in his tracks, leaving him caught in the flares, helpless - he had heard the sound of men falling. Thirty fucking guards, and Keith can’t make it one night? He’s not getting bested by a City boy.

The desert is not a friend. Unconsciousness, when it happens, is an afterthought, not a surprise. He dreams of watching Lance scrying during class, the way his eyes would clean to blank slate; how Keith could look and look without Lance ever noticing, and how it made him feel invisible, hollow, unreal. How looking at Lance with his eyes gone faraway felt somehow like stealing.

 

*

 

When Keith wakes up to see a lion watching him, he decides he’s probably dying.

“Go away,” he mumbles to it, and closes his eyes against the imaginary lion, the baking heat of approaching noonday, and the realisation he’s going to die alone at seventeen in the desert. He isn’t sure if the throb in his shoulder means healing or infection, and doesn’t want to open his eyes to look, because his body is heavy and he’s seeing lions.

A shadow falls over his face. Reluctantly, Keith opens his eyes. The lion reaches out and nudges him with an oddly velvety paw. The sunlight catches through the flare of their fur, picking out red strands.

“I said go away,” Keith mutters, and rolls onto his good side. “I’ll be dead soon. You can eat me then. Wait an hour.”

The lion growls under their breath, and nudges him again.

“Get out of my light,” Keith mutters. He shoves weakly at the ground, trying to turn his back on them better. “You’re not real.”

He’s not sure how long it’s been since he passed out. Maybe a day? Maybe more? He remembers waking to an afternoon, but he’s not sure when. He remembers waking to Lance, but Keith hadn’t been able to reach for him.

The lion bites him. It’s gentle - light pressure, nipping with no real damage, a rebuke. Then, just as abruptly, the lion withdraws, taking their shadow with them. The blaze of heat is back. Keith faintly watches them pad away, their silhouette misty in the sun.

“Hey,” he snaps, “Come back. You’re my - you’re my - I made you up, you can’t just leave me!” The lion doesn’t turn around. Figures. Just what he should expect. Just what he should have learnt by now.

When the lion returns, it might have been half an hour or three hours. Time is tipping sideways and Keith is falling out of it. He’s annoyed by how relieved he feels. If he’s going to kick it out here, at least it will be known, even if the lion - lioness, he corrects himself, squinting - is just waiting for table scraps.

“Why did you come back?” he mutters. His throat hurts with the effort. “Are you lost too?”

The lioness makes a noise a little like a long sigh. He blinks, the space between opening and closing his eyes growing longer again, until she headbutts him. When he focuses, he can’t help but think she looks sad.

“What happened to you?” he rasps. “Was it something bad?”  

She doesn’t reply. He doesn’t think she can. In that moment, he feels they might understand each other. 

 

*

 

The first time Keith sees Lance on a broadcast, it’s a year and a day after his escape. Later, he realises it’s a deliberate gesture, the kind of careful cruelty he’s learnt to expect from the City’s regime, taunting a boy who’d escaped from under their clutches to become inconvenient. _Come back from the western skies, lion boy. Come back for your heart._ The broadcast is declared to be mandatory viewing for the wider population, which ironically makes it mandatory viewing for each and every cell resistance leader. Keith, half-awake after a sleepless night, is sat to Shiro’s right, his knee drawn up to his chest and fussing with the fraying hem of his pants cuff. Half-awake after a sleepless night, he looks up to see Lance’s face on the screen, Lance in powder blue, the microphone in front of him picking up each and every thread of his voice as he reads from a matching grimoire, the memory of it sewn into Keith’s heartstrings though he hasn’t heard it waking for a year.

He thinks, absurdly: _I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. This can’t be happening._ But Keith knows when he’s not dreaming. He notices, absently, that his whole body is shaking, that the entire room is staring at him, that he’s knocked his chair to the ground and that Shiro is watching, alarmed, his mouth open around Keith’s name.

 _I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. This can’t be happening._ Lance, paled by his clothing, hands outstretched, buoyed by applause. There’d been talk of this for months, whispers from informants working in the Palace. Of the Empire having retained the services of their own witch in response to the Resistance propaganda, their own shiny new martyr. Keith had assumed Lance had graduated with the rest of their class, gone underground with his family, gone for hiding in plain sight. But this is too much sight. This is something Keith cannot unsee. He stands, watching helplessly, as Lance makes it snow in August to a thunderous crowd. He hears the words _the strongest witch of his generation._ He hears _protector of the Emperor._ He hears _the sacrifice that is the Last Good Witch of the City._

Keith hasn’t ever seen a Compelled witch up close. He knows Haggar can do it: a puppet-mistress harnessing the magic in another person’s body, binding it to her will like strings. But he doesn’t know how to tell. The light in the Central Square refracts off diamonds in Lance’s ears, the ice in his hands, the shine of his eyes. Keith remembers the longing in Lance’s face, remembers how he left Lance alone in a building full of indigo-jacketed guards, heard the sound of ice breaking and left anyway, and - not for the first time - Keith thinks _what have they done to you in my name?_

Keith hasn’t ever seen a Compelled witch up close. He’s seen only ever seen them afterwards. That’s enough. That’s always been more than enough. Keith knows when he’s not dreaming. This can’t be happening, only of course it can. This is a war. There is always more to lose.

 

*

 

“How can you not have a favourite colour?” Lance demands, on their way to the Palace, as though this is some kind of personal affront. Keith shrugs, eyes straying to the train window. Lance’s clothes feel simultaneously heavy and impossibly soft against his back, ownership like comfort.

He says, “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Mine’s blue, by the way,” Lance says, “Thanks for asking.”

“I don’t ask things I already know the answer to.” Keith’s face heats at the surprise on Lance’s. He flounders. “I’ve seen your wardrobe. Don’t you get bored?”

“Hell no,” Lance retorts easily, “I’d wear it every single day if I could.” His eyes bright in the sunshine, he looks impossible. He looks like something Keith should be waking up from. His ankle, hooked around Keith’s under the table like a pause in an ongoing conversation, is something Keith should expect himself to be waking up from. Lance watches Keith watch him, something easy in the lines of his face, and then he leans forward and taps his fingers against Keith’s arm.

“Hey,” he says, voice soft. “You should be able to see the City soon. You’ve never been before, right? We don’t have long now.”


End file.
